yesterday we received a lot of questions about the difference in data mining results by GO Hub and The Silph Road. Mainely, the questions were directed at a few things: Legendary Raid Pass and Exclusive Raids.

In an effort to promote data mining collaboration and critical discourse, we will openly discuss the methodology and the reasoning behind the results of GO Hub’s 0.69.0 data mining.

We hope that The Silph Road will also publish a similar post, explaining their approach.

Is it an Exclusive or a Legendary Raid Pass?

GO Hub has found a new icon in the APK, curiously named “Item_1403.png“, depicting a new type of Raid Pass. This icon is attached to the Raid Ticket group (category 14, 1403) and it is the third item in the group (number 3, 1403).

For those who are not familiar with Niantic’s inventory item naming convention, this is how it looks like:

Item_XXYY.png

where XX denotes item category and YY denotes the ordinal number of that particular item in the group. For example:

It’s important to understand that not all inventory items follow this convention, but those that do, follow it without deviating from the pattern.

With that said, it’s evident that the new Raid Pass icon is indisputably the Legendary Raid Pass item referenced in the code base.

But this is not the end of discussion, as we still need to address Exclusive Raids and Invites and how the Legendary Pass relates to those.

Exclusive Raids

In 0.69.0, a lot of code was added to support a new type of Raids: exclusive invite only raids. This is evident from the very top to bottom of the APK, as there are references to exclusive invites, Gyms being closed due to an exclusive raid, error handlers for attempting to join an exclusive raid etc…

In the midst of it all, there is a number of references to a code construct named exclusive_raid_ticket, which is likely the root cause of different data mining results.

Exclusive Raid Tickets are quite often referenced throughout the APK, and we know quite a lot about them already:

you’ll be able to have multiple Exclusive Raid Tickets

there will be a list of your Exclusive Tickets

they have an attached description

there is a type of push notifications related to them

there are even references to fake Exclusive Tickets (role unknown)

With that being said, it seems like Exclusive Raid Tickets are a different feature that enables Raid Tickets that are specifically tied to a particular Raid.

In other words, we don’t know if this feature can/will be used only for Legendary Raids or it will be a general tool that enables Niantic to create exclusive Raids. It’s also unclear which types of Raid Passes will be eligible to be exclusive.

What we do know is that, currently, there is a reference to a “congratulation you got an exclusive raid invite” message in the code.

So, where does this leave us?

No one is really wrong

After reviewing the code again, it’s safe to conclude the following:

The icon in question is an icon linked to the ITEM_LEGENDARY_RAID_TICKET enumeration inside the code.

Very likely, it will be first Exclusive Raid Ticket we will receive.

It’s possible Niantic is steering away from the Legendary Raid naming convention due to game design/naming choices

Both The Silph Road’s, Fev Games and our data mine is correct, but interpretations are different

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